Temple Recommend Activation

Hi. I am a recently called Stake Clerk. Recently I have had some issues validating temple recommends where it appears that a unit is issuing temple recommends from two separate books.
Can someone confirm whether you can use more than one temple recommend book at the same time?

Most wards use more than one temple recommend book all of the time. In our ward, the bishop is issuing living ordinance recommends and also keeps a regular recommend book in his office. The counselors use a recommend book that is kept in the file cabinet. That is three books being used at the same time.

It could be that the recommend book is not recorded as being assigned to your stake. Did the ward mark the recommend book received in MLS? If that doesn't resolve it, you may have to contact the Global Service Center so that someone can look into why the recommend activation is failing.

Many thanks for your reply.
I was aware that you could use a living ordinance book alongside a regular one, but wanted to check whether you could have two regular recommend books on the go at the same time.
I will double-check with the unit Ward Clerk to see if the books have both been marked received in MLS.

How and who and where are the recommend books supposed to be marked received in MLS. Not familiar with that process.

I just went through the process of activating recommend books that were not being recognized by the system. There was an error message to the effect that the recommend number came from a book that was not recognized. I ended up having to take pictures of the books and emailing the pictures and info on when the books were received to [email address redacted]. They activated the books and registered them to the ward. I asked if I was supposed to do that any time I received books. This was their reply: Temple recommend books need to be activated in this way only in special circumstances. In the ideal situation, the books will leave the distribution center already assigned. However, they are sometimes sent to units before being fully activated.

Moderator edit: Removed email address out of an abundance of caution. Posts here are visible to the general public, search engines, etc.

I've told this story before, but I still love it. Shortly after we started using the bar-coded recommends, I was issued the first recommend from a new book. After my stake interview, I tried to activate my new recommend, because I held a position that could do that. The system rejected the recommend, saying the recommend number did not fall within the range of recommends assigned to our unit. It turns out that I was in the Fairview Ward in Nebraska, but the recommend book had been assigned to a Fairview Ward in Utah. Rather than change that, we just ordered a new book of recommends, and destroyed the mis-assigned book. It was a happy accident that no other recommends from that book had yet been issued to anyone.

While we were doing temple recommend interviews during Covid, a couple of recommends did not get activated by the stake presidency counselor when the interview happened. And now I as the stake clerk am (4 months later) trying to do so and the LCR software won't let it happen. Does anyone know if I'm missing something that would allow me to validate the recommend, or will I need to call Global Support to make it happen?

snlutz wrote:I as the stake clerk am (4 months later) trying to do so and the LCR software won't let it happen.

I have not done so recently, but the last time I activated a recommend very late I still was able to do so. In spite of the warning, I was able to continue on past it and activate the recommend. Things may have changed. If you cannot coax the computer to do it, the Global Services Department indeed would be your next step.

You are right - it did allow the change even though there was a warning.